


Rewrite

by motorcyclefl1p



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-11
Updated: 2019-05-11
Packaged: 2020-03-01 03:13:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18791842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/motorcyclefl1p/pseuds/motorcyclefl1p
Summary: It's never too late to change your mind.  (Spoilers for "Endgame")





	Rewrite

_A chill wind howled across barren rock as he haltingly climbed the last few steps. He shivered in the cold. No, he corrected himself. His suit was designed to insulate him comfortably even from subzero temperatures. This cold seeped from emptiness, bit to the bone, clawed inside his skull._

_He glanced around but there was no sign of life or movement. Perhaps, with the loss of the Stone, its red-skulled guardian had gone as well._

_Recognition squeezed the breath out of him as he turned his gaze to the two craggy spires and the desolate ledge beyond. Shuddering, he willed himself to approach the edge of the cliff, one heavy step at a time. His mind seemed to be planets away when he noted a blackened, blasted hollow where one of Hawkeye’s arrows must have detonated. After what seemed an eternity, he reached the edge and, with another supreme effort, looked down._

_A long, long way down to where the horrific drop ended in nothing but blank, gray stone._

_He forced himself to keep looking, keep his eyes open against the rushing wind. Where was she? He had begged Clint to describe her to him. Clint hadn’t wanted to. But he had alternately yelled and pleaded and the two men had nearly come to blows until Clint broke down and told him what would ever after haunt his dreams._

_Steve peered down, down, down into the wasteland chasm, searching in vain for a broken black-suited figure at the very bottom, porcelain skin white like death, fiery hair streaming like blood._

_He deserved to be haunted, he told himself. It was the least he could do for her memory, if he never slept again._

_It was only when the wind blew icy across his face that he felt the tears searing down his cheeks._

_He’d almost forgotten what he’d come for. He fumbled for the tiny, slippery thing that thrummed in his hand, blazed against the black of his glove. For a moment he stood at the cliff’s edge, suddenly irresolute._

_Then he flung it into the void._

_He stared as it bounced off the rock—once, twice, three times—and then sent up a blinding ochre glow that suddenly flooded his vision..._

_“Lost something, soldier?”_

_He would know that voice anywhere._

_He whipped around, heart in his throat, hope making him light-headed. She stood in front of him, smiling, looking for all the world like she had just made another peanut butter sandwich at the compound. He staggered forward, frantic with gladness and relief._

_“Nat!”_

_He stopped short. He couldn’t get closer. She remained just out of reach, smiling at him sadly._

_He couldn’t think of anything else to say. He found himself tearing up again. “We won.”_

_Her gaze serene, she was as beautiful as ever in the golden haze. “What did it cost you?”_

_His response tore out of him in a sob. “Everything.”_

_The glow dimmed. He reached for her again, but already her smile was twisting into a snarl and then she was Red Skull, blazing with fury, lunging toward him. The glow abruptly faded and Steve felt himself slip on the icy rock as it crumbled beneath his feet and then he was falling, falling, falling—_  
“Steve!”

He opened his eyes with a gasp. His throat felt raw. He found Peggy’s brown eyes on him, still dull from sleep.

“I’m sorry,” he rasped after a moment. He was still trying to catch his breath.

“You’ve nothing to be sorry for.” Peggy pressed a kiss to his cheek—wet with tears, he realized—and lay back down beside him, draping her arm comfortingly across his chest. He sighed, burying his nose in her dark curls.

His return of the Soul Stone had been much less eventful. No, he hadn’t seen Natasha’s body anywhere. He had tossed the Stone into the abyss. It had disappeared. 

And then nothing had happened.

After a few minutes of waiting—hoping, praying, wishing—he had reopened his eyes to find nothing changed. He was alone on the cliff. The wind still whistled around him.

As he’d started to descend the stone stairway he’d seen, out of the corner of his eye, a dark figure materialize on the ledge behind him, a hostile energy begin to burn. But he’d heard nothing, felt nothing. He’d reached the bottom of the stairway unmolested.

When he had returned the last Stone to the Ancient One he had hesitated.

She had asked him if, perhaps, as a small gesture for saving the world, there was anything she could do for him.

Now he settled back in the too-soft bed, stared up at floral wallpaper and shadow-flecked ceiling, and told himself to go to sleep. His hand tightened on Peggy’s elbow; he breathed deeply of the smell of her hair. All he’d ever wanted. All he’d ever dreamed of, all he’d hardly dared to dream of, for years and years.

The future—cozy and quiet and peaceful—stretched before them.

“How you’ve changed,” Peggy mused, as if to herself.

He started guiltily. He’d thought she’d fallen asleep. “How’s that, Peg?”

She chuckled, patting his arm. “Nothing important. Sweet dreams, Captain Rogers.” 

He waited, but she said nothing more. When she was in a mood like this, it would not be shaken. Soon, despite his unease, he found himself nodding off to her quiet breathing and the susurrus of the wind in the tree outside their window.

A small echo of her voice drifted to him from what seemed like very far away through an impossibly misty fog, as he tipped over the cliff’s edge into slumber.

“She must have been somebody very special.”  
  
  
  
It was a much harder landing this time around.

From streaks of gold and chrome light the world outside his helmet flashed into blurry darkness as he tumbled end over end on what felt like a hard stone floor, slammed into some kind of wall, and crumpled in a daze. Gasping for breath, he deactivated his helmet. As he struggled to reorient himself he became dimly aware of several indistinct faces gathering around him in the gloom, curious, staring.

Then came a panicked shout from somewhere he couldn’t see, in a guttural, familiar language—

A dark shape flew through the air, crashed into the wall above him. He twisted just in time not to be crushed by what turned out to be an inert human male.

Before he could react, another limp body toppled onto him. He had barely worked his head free to breathe when another body tumbled onto him, then another, and another. Chaos had erupted inside the half-lit chamber as his senses finally regained focus. Harsh shouts of command or warning, gunshots, shrieks of pain; the crunch of bone, the pop of joints. The thrum and crackle of blue-bright electricity. A faint smell of burned flesh drifted in the dank air. Horrified, Steve struggled to get up under the growing pile of not just bodies, but debris: a fallen filing cabinet, a broken metal crane, a huge, splintered desk. But the quantum leap had weakened him and he found himself straining futilely under the weight.

He realized dimly the noise had ceased. A last scream choked off with a sickening snap of sinew.

He wondered if he should call out. 

Then he felt above him the weight being shifted, shoved off of him, pushed aside. He tensed, willing energy and strength to return to his muscles as he waited to be discovered. It hadn’t sounded like there were very many people carrying out the attack; only two or three at most, stealthy, practiced, sure. If they weren’t enhanced, maybe he could still get out alive. He bided his time, sensing the last few bodies being laboriously hefted from on top of him. This person was not as strong as he was.

There was a soft, feminine grunt as the last weight was rolled off him.

He stared up at green eyes, green eyes he’d know anywhere, green eyes he’d missed like his heart and soul had been ripped out of him, green eyes he’d longed to see again even lying in bed next to the love of his life in the long, quiet nights of suburbia. 

Green eyes mirroring his own shock.

“Steve?!”  
  
  
  
He was dreaming. He pinched himself. She laughed at him. While crying. Still a dream.

He was afraid to say her name. Maybe he’d wake up.

Before he could say or do anything else she had shushed him, ushered him through a corridor, a cabinet, an air vent; a tunnel, a catacomb, a sewer. A manhole. A side street. A blind alley. She propped him up against a brick wall, panting from the exertion.

Sunlight, fresh air. It reminded him, ironically, of his and Peggy’s neighborhood. He blinked at her, still dazed. Still hoping against hope. “Nat.” It came out a plea, not a question, not a statement.

She pulled off her cowl. Dark hair tumbled down her back. But the smile was the same.

“Steve,” she breathed, and she kissed him.

He crushed her to him, and when they ran out of breath they broke the kiss and just held each other laughing, tears streaming down their faces. 

“What happened with Thanos?” she whispered.

“We won,” he told her. He would explain later.

They picked up supplies, with mute exchanged glances slipping with long-practiced ease into old covers of boyfriend and girlfriend. This was convenient, too, as Steve found himself unable to stop touching her, keeping hold of her—lightly, fearfully, as though she might disappear if he clung too hard. He grasped her arm, held her hand, entwined his fingers with hers. At first she stopped and looked at him searchingly, but there was no time for questions, and she squeezed his hand back. 

As night fell she led him to her safehouse, the basement of a run-down apartment building in a decrepit area of town. She shut and secured the front door behind them and he dropped down onto the bare concrete floor, leaning up against the wall, suddenly exhausted. She smiled at him fondly, already on her way to the refrigerator.

“Let’s get some food into you.”

She had always been a competent cook—she tended to succeed at everything she tried, he reminded himself—and soon the tempting smell of soup roused him from weariness. As he came to her little dining table he found himself looking over her small but cozily furnished space and almost laughed aloud at the sense of relief that abruptly washed over him: Her bed had only a single pillow. There was only one mug (chipped). There was only one photograph, set up on a cluttered bookshelf, showing her with a dog.

“What’s so funny?” She was smiling at him, he realized belatedly. He must still be so damn transparent to her.

He tried his best to lie anyway. “I didn’t know you liked dogs.” 

She turned back to the refrigerator with a smirk. Humoring him. “Belongs to a friend of mine.”

Soon he was savoring a steaming bowl of hearty soup with excellent brown bread. Almost as hungrily he devoured her with his gaze as she sat down at the table next to him with her own meal.

She flushed under his scrutiny as she talked quickly but gently, oriented him in time and space as if she were merely debriefing another agent. Steve almost laughed at the thought, then found himself blinking back new tears. The familiarity felt good, as good as nothing had felt in years.

She had woken up, she said, in an abandoned facility in Belarus, twenty-one days after that fateful snap of Thanos’s fingers. Knowing the timeline had been compromised, she had kept a low profile in the years since. Establishing a discreet new identity had been easy enough, but she had soon found herself falling into old habits, picking up on intel despite herself, and now ran what self-imposed missions she could to uproot or expose clandestine new terrorist or paramilitary organizations. 

“What you arrived in this afternoon, practically by sheer accident, was the underground lab of a Neo-Hydra cell based outside Nuremberg.” She ladled a second helping of soup into his empty bowl even without his asking and he couldn’t help smiling to himself. “Some months ago Pym and Van Dyne’s research was stolen, so I’ve been monitoring this group and a few others in case something would turn up.” Her grin turned teary-eyed. “I didn’t expect that _you_ would.”

He shook his head. “Our turn in the quantum realm won’t happen for another few years yet. I’m no physicist but I’m guessing those bastards did _something_ right.”

She laughed, even as a tear ran down her cheek. “Too bad I killed them before I could thank them.”

He chuckled back. “Maybe next time.” He hesitated only a fraction of a moment before reaching out to wipe her tear away.

She stilled under his touch, lowering her eyes to the table. “Steve...”

“Natasha.” He luxuriated in her name. He hadn’t said it out loud in a very long time. She hesitated, then clasped his hand in both of hers, cradling it against her cheek for a moment.

“What happened, Steve?” Her eyes on him were urgent, her tone deliberate.

She needed him to be honest with her, he knew.

“I missed you,” he said simply.

He’d always been honest. But he had never been so forthcoming before. Steve, in his old age, was done waiting.

They made love tentatively in the shower, exploring each other tenderly, retracing old paths, discovering new ones. They had slept together in the past a few times, sought comfort, sought relief. They’d been careful to keep up boundaries, respect the limits of their friendship. But this time Steve was focused, devoted. He could sense Nat’s surprise—her surprise and her heightened pleasure—and cursed himself for never having really paid attention before, never actually noticing how earnestly she met his every move, how her face glowed with passion when she looked into his eyes.

They nearly fell out of her single-sized bed more than once, each time melting into smothered laughter; with teeth and tongue she plotted the delicate shift of muscle and vein down his neck until he could stand it no longer and pulled her down for a growling kiss. He remembered to deadly effect how she wanted his mouth between her legs and she came helplessly, sobbing, holding on to the headstand for dear life, because it had only ever really been him.

Maybe it was the super serum, maybe it was too much energy after what felt like a lifetime of lonely duty. Heck, maybe it was the soup. But he found himself lying awake under her softly snoring form, not restless, just thoughtful. He watched as the approaching day splashed ever-lightening blues and purples on the wall across from her only window.

For the first time in a long while, he was looking forward to the sunrise.  
  
  
fin


End file.
